


Pearl

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 11:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18755551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Five times someone else witnessed Mulder and Scully being cute together





	Pearl

1

Pearl is glad that serious young man in the basement office had a partner now. He spent too many nights alone in there, hunched over that messy desk, playing around with slides and photos and stuff. She’s not sure where the redheaded girl sits but she hears her sometimes, telling him off, but in a nice way. Her name still ain’t on the door but he calls her Scully and she’s smart, real smart. Smarter than him in lots of ways. But where she’s all answers, he’s all questions, where’s she’s all caution, he’s all impulse. And sometimes that’s the better way to be. You gotta be curious, be bolder, or you end up cleaning offices for a living.

Tonight, they’re both there. He’s all excited, talking about the Smithsonian and Scully is teasing him. It’s the change in her tone that Pearl notices. Scully, with her suits and sensible heels, she isn’t a teaser; that’s his nature. But being on the receiving end, he likes it. Pearl can tell. In fact, he loves it. She stops cleaning the glass plate on the copier for a bit, just so she can hear more. 

“But Scully, Professor Carvel showed you the data. How can you deny it?”  
“Mulder, a collection of anecdotes about beast men and women, albeit far more than I had anticipated, is not enough for me. It speaks of a shared cultural mindset, not of scientific proof that these…these creatures exist.”  
“But don’t you find it exciting that there is a direct correlation between the biota and the prevalence of sightings? Doesn’t that do something for you?”  
She laughs, Scully does. Full on laughs. In his face. And it’s the best sound Pearl has heard in years. Because it makes him laugh. Fool doesn’t know what he’s even laughing at, but he’s in stitches and they’re both there, opposite side of that desk, giggling like teenagers.   
“Why is it so funny?” he asks it eventually, but by then Pearl is back to cleaning the glass. Because it is, she thinks. Because it just is.

2

Scully left. She just wasn’t there for a while, and Mulder was back to being sad again. But then she came back and he perked up, smiled a lot more, asked his damn fool questions, and waited for her clever answers. Even though he dismissed them to her face, Pearl knew he collected those bits of her wisdom, her sensibleness, and used them when he needed to. And then she was gone again. Taken this time, poor man was a wreck for weeks until she returned, got better and came back to work. 

They came back from Florida a day or so ago and he’s been in a jolly mood. Keeps talking about Blockheads and Dog-Faced boys. He even put two tickets on her side of the desk. For Silver’s Circus. As though that smart Scully is going to go on a date with him to the circus. What is thinking, that boy? She’s an art gallery girl, a museum girl, one of those arthouse movie evenings girl. Pearl thinks one day she might have to teach that boy how to properly ask this girl out. So that she says yes. The way they look at each other. The way he pined for her when she was missing. That says something.

“Mulder, can I get you something for lunch?” Scully says from the doorway. Pearl nods at her and gets one of Scully’s pretty closed-mouth smiles. She’s shy like that, tucks her chin to her chest before she smiles. Won’t show her teeth.  
“Sure,” he says, and he misses the smile on account of how he’s got his face in a report.

It’s not ten minutes before Scully is back and Pearl hasn’t finished emptying the bins yet. She’s holding two paper bags in her hand and she has a bolder smile on her lips this time. In fact, if Pearl didn’t know any better, she’d say that girl was up to something. 

Pearl hangs back so she can see through the gap in the door and she gets the pay off straightaway because when Mulder opens his bag without quitting reading his report, he leaps back off his chair with a real girly scream when a bunch of bugs jump out of the bag.

Later, Pearl finds a cricket among the sunflower seed shells and starts laughing.

3

She notices the keychain on the desk and the gaudy wrapping paper. She’s vacuuming the carpet and didn’t hear him come back into the office.  
“Hey Pearl,” he says.  
“Mr Mulder,” she replies and switches off the vacuum. “I’ll come back.”  
“Don’t mind me,” he says and takes a roll of sticky tape from the drawer. He looks up at her. “It’s my partner’s birthday.” He sticks the key chain on the paper and covers it, folds the ends and sticks it all together with a strip of tape he chews off the roll. He looks up at Pearl again. “Is there something the matter?”  
Boy doesn’t have a clue. “Nothing,” she says and switches the vacuum cleaner on. He leaves.  
By the time he comes back, she’s almost done. He’s holding a bag and wearing a shit-eater.   
“This better?” he asks, pulling out a white gift box with a gold ribbon round it.  
She nods and he grins and he heads out of the office whistling Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday.

4

They don’t talk like they used to. It’s like after that time they got stuck in Antarctica (the watercooler gossip spreads like wildfire where these two are concerned) they just sort of disconnected. He broods a lot, staying late. She often leaves without saying goodbye.   
Tonight, though, he seems more upbeat. He’s humming. She sees a folded newspaper on his desk. Box scores for baseball.  
“Pearl,” he says, “what do you think about aliens?”  
“I think they’d be real stupid to land here.”  
“Why do you say that?”  
“Cos people are mean and they’re more than likely to just hurt those creatures from other planets than treat them with respect.”  
He nods, chews on the end of a pencil. “And what do you think about baseball?”  
“I don’t care for it that much. If I was gonna get the chance to sit still for as long as it takes to play a game, I’d sooner watch something beautiful.”  
The pencil clatters to the desk and he leans forward on his elbows. “What’s beautiful to you, Pearl?”  
Your Miss Scully, she thinks. And if you opened your eyes you’d see it too. Spending all your hours watching men thwack a ball with a stick instead watching that woman, well, there’s not much hope.   
“I like the night sky, Mr Mulder. The moon and the stars. And if there are alien ships up there, I like them too. There’s nothing more beautiful than the sky.”  
His sigh is loud but she thinks he’s made some kind of decision. Something important, by the way he snatches his phone and makes a call on his way out.  
“Scully, meet me at the baseball fields, 7 o’clock…”

5

She’s wearing the same sweater, Pearl thinks, as she pushes the cart past the basement office door. That soft green one. It suits her colouring. She’s also wearing a smile and blushed cheeks and he’s talking in such a soft tone, one she hasn’t heard him use before. They’re sitting opposite each other, a desk between them, but their fingers are touching. Pearl smiles as she unwraps the cord to the vacuum cleaner.  
“I should go,” Scully says.  
“I’ll walk with you.” His hand is on her lower back as they turn out of the door, steps perfectly synchronised.  
Standing at the lift, his hand slides lower and he rests his fingers over the swell of Scully’s backside. Thank the Lord for that, Pearl thinks. She nearly whoops out loud. Maybe she did, because Mulder looks over his shoulder and winks at her.   
They’re going to be okay, she thinks. Whatever happens, they’re going to be okay.


End file.
